A trial began this week surrounding a shocking incident at a Virginia elementary school where a 6-year-old student shot a teacher, despite multiple warnings about the child possessing a firearm. The teacher, Abby Zwerner, is now seeking $40 million in damages, claiming that a former assistant principal neglected to address the alarming situation.

In January 2023, while conducting a reading session at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Zwerner was tragically shot in her hand and chest. She endured nearly two weeks of hospitalization and underwent six surgeries. Unfortunately, she still suffers from impaired function in her left hand, and a bullet remains lodged in her chest.

The lawsuit targets former assistant principal Ebony Parker, alleging she ignored repeated alerts from four different individuals who expressed concerns about the young student carrying a gun. According to Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, Parker’s failure to act is central to the case.

During the opening statements, Toscano criticized Parker for making “bad decisions and choices” on the day of the shooting. She emphasized that Parker had the power to search the student, remove him from the classroom, and involve law enforcement, yet failed to do so.

Parker had the authority but failed to search the student, remove him from the classroom and call law enforcement, Toscano added.

The shooting occurred on the first day after the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner’s phone two days earlier, Toscano said. It sent shock waves through the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how a child so young could get access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

“No one could have imagined that a 6-year old, first-grade student would bring a firearm into a school,” Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, told jurors. “You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable. That’s the heart of this case.”

Hogan said that decision making in a public school setting is “cooperative” and “collaborative.” He also warned of hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decisions based on stuff that came up after the fact,” Hogan said. “The law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”

Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal.

Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect – one for “each of the eight bullets that endangered all the students” in Zwerner’s classroom, prosecutors said.

Criminal charges against school officials following a school shooting are quite rare, experts say. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison upon a conviction.

The student’s mother was sentenced to a total of nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges.